Star Formation Might Depend on Galactic Magnetic Fields

A galactic merger is a chaotic event. When two massive structures like galaxies merge, their powerful gravitational forces wrench stars out of their usual orbits in a process called violent relaxation. In essence, the merging galaxies are evolving rapidly, and small perturbations can be amplified as the system moves toward a more stationary state.
Intuition suggests that this chaos should disrupt the galaxy, including its star formation, but new observations of the Arp 220 galaxy merger show tha